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January 11, 2003
In Ryan's Words: 'I Must Act'
Following is the prepared text of Gov. George
Ryan's speech at Northwestern University College of Law.
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"Four years ago I was sworn in as the 39th
Governor of Illinois. That was just four short years
ago; that's when I was a firm believer in the American
System of Justice and the death penalty. I believed
that the ultimate penalty for the taking of a life was
administrated in a just and fair manner.
Today, 3 days before I end my term as Governor, I
stand before you to explain my frustrations and deep
concerns about both the administration and the penalty
of death. It is fitting that we are gathered here
today at Northwestern University with the students,
teachers, lawyers and investigators who first shed
light on the sorrowful condition of Illinois' death
penalty system. Professors Larry Marshall, Dave
Protess have and their students along with
investigators Paul Ciolino have gone above the call.
They freed the falsely accused Ford Heights Four, they
saved Anthony Porter's life, they fought for Rolando
Cruz and Alex Hernandez. They devoted time and effort
on behalf of Aaron Patterson, a young man who lost 15
years of his youth sitting among the condemned, and
LeRoy Orange, who lost 17 of the best years of his
life on death row.
It is also proper that we are together with dedicated
people like Andrea Lyon who has labored on the front
lines trying capital cases for many years and who is
now devoting her passion to creating an innocence
center at De Paul University. You saved Madison
Hobley's life.
Together you spared the lives and secured the freedom
of 17 men, men who were wrongfully convicted and
rotting in the condemned units of our state prisons.
What you have achieved is of the highest calling.
Thank You!
Yes, it is right that I am here with you, where, in a
manner of speaking, my journey from staunch supporters
of capital punishment to reformer all began. But I
must tell you, since the beginning of our journey, my
thoughts and feelings about the death penalty have
changed many, many times. I realize that over the
course of my reviews I had said that I would not do
blanket commutation. I have also said it was an option
that was there and I would consider all options.
During my time in public office I have always reserved
my right to change my mind if I believed it to be in
the best public interest, whether it be about taxes,
abortions or the death penalty. But I must confess
that the debate with myself has been the toughest
concerning the death penalty. I suppose the reason the
death penalty has been the toughest is because it is
so final, the only public policy that determines who
lives and who dies. In addition it is the only issue
that attracts most of the legal minds across the
country. I have received more advice on this issue
than any other policy issue I have dealt with in my 35
years of public service. I have kept an open mind on
both sides of the issues of commutation for life or
death.
I have read, listened to and discussed the issue with
the families of the victims as well as the families of
the condemned. I know that any decision I make will
not be accepted by one side or the other. I know that
my decision will be just that - my decision, based on
all the facts I could gather over the past 3 years. I
may never be comfortable with my final decision, but I
will know in my heart, that I did my very best to do
the right thing.
Having said that I want to share a story with you:
I grew up in Kankakee which even today is still a
small midwestern town, a place where people tend to
know each other. Steve Small was a neighbor. I watched
him grow up. He would babysit my young children, which
was not for the faint of heart since Lura Lynn and I
had six children, 5 of them under the age of 3. He was
a bright young man who helped run the family business.
He got married and he and his wife had three children
of their own. Lura Lynn was especially close to him
and his family. We took comfort in knowing he was
there for us and we for him.
One September midnight he received a call at his home.
There had been a break-in at the nearby house he was
renovating. But as he left his house, he was seized at
gunpoint by kidnappers. His captors buried him alive
in a shallow hole. He suffocated to death before
police could find him.
His killer led investigators to where Steve's body was
buried. The killer, Danny Edward was also from my
hometown. He now sits on death row. I also know his
family. I share this story with you so that you know I
do not come to this as a neophyte without having
experienced a small bit of the bitter pill the
survivors of murder must swallow.
My responsibilities and obligations are more than my
neighbors and my family. I represent all the people of
Illinois, like it or not. The decision I make about
our criminal justice system is felt not only here but
the world over.
The other day, I received a call from former South
African President Nelson Mandela who reminded me that
the United States sets the example for justice and
fairness for the rest of the world. Today the United
States is not in league with most of our major allies:
Europe, Canada, Mexico, most of South and Central
America. These countries rejected the death penalty.
We are partners in death with several third world
countries. Even Russia has called a moratorium.
The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states. In
none of these states has the homicide rate increased.
In Illinois last year we had about 1000 murders, only
2 percent of that 1000 were sentenced to death. Where
is the fairness and equality in that? The death
penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly
because of the absence of standards for the 102
Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to
request the death sentence. Should geography be a
factor in determining who gets the death sentence? I
don't think so but in Illinois it makes a difference.
You are 5 times more likely to get a death sentence
for first degree murder in the rural area of Illinois
than you are in Cook County. Where is the justice and
fairness in that ? Where is the proportionality?
The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu wrote to me this week
stating that "to take a life when a life has been
lost is revenge, it is not justice. He says justice
allows for mercy, clemency and compassion. These
virtues are not weakness."
"In fact the most glaring weakness is that no
matter how efficient and fair the death penalty may
seem in theory, in actual practice it is primarily
inflicted upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant and
against racial minorities. " That was a quote
from Former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote
that in his book "Public Justice, Private
Mercy" he wrote that nearly 50 years ago, nothing
has changed in nearly 50 years.
I never intended to be an activist on this issue. I
watched in surprise as freed death row inmate Anthony
Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into
the arms of Northwestern University Professor Dave
Protess who poured his heart and soul into proving
Porter's innocence with his journalism students.
He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the
execution chamber where the state would kill him.
It would all be so antiseptic and most of us would not
have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was
innocent of the double murder for which he had been
condemned to die.
After Mr. Porter's case there was the report by
Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken
Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our
capital punishment system. Half of the nearly 300
capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new
trial or resentencing.
Nearly Half!
33 of the death row inmates were represented at trial
by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some
point suspended from practicing law.
Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 were
African American defendants who had been convicted or
condemned to die by all-white juries.
More than two-thirds of the inmates on death row were
African American.
46 inmates were convicted on the basis of testimony
from jailhouse informants.
I can recall looking at these cases and the
information from the Mills/Armstrong series and asking
my staff: How does that happen? How in God's name does
that happen? I'm not a lawyer, so somebody explain it
to me.
But no one could. Not to this day.
Then over the next few months. There were three more
exonerated men, freed because their sentence hinged on
a jailhouse informant or new DNA technology proved
beyond a shadow of doubt their innocence.
We then had the dubious distinction of exonerating
more men than we had executed. 13 men found innocent,
12 executed.
As I reported yesterday, there is not a doubt in my
mind that the number of innocent men freed from our
Death Row stands at 17, with the pardons of Aaron
Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy
Orange.
That is an absolute embarrassment. 17 exonerated death
row inmates is nothing short of a catastrophic
failure. But the 13, now 17 men, is just the beginning
of our sad arithmetic in prosecuting murder cases.
During the time we have had capital punishment in
Illinois, there were at least 33 other people wrongly
convicted on murder charges and exonerated. Since we
reinstated the death penalty there are also 93 people,
93, where our criminal justice system imposed the most
severe sanction and later rescinded the sentence or
even released them from custody because they were
innocent.
How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to
occur before we can all agree that the system is
broken?
Throughout this process, I have heard many different
points of view expressed. I have had the opportunity
to review all of the cases involving the inmates on
death row. I have conducted private group meetings,
one in Springfield and one in Chicago, with the
surviving family members of homicide victims. Everyone
in the room who wanted to speak had the opportunity to
do so. Some wanted to express their grief, others
wanted to express their anger. I took it all in.
My commission and my staff had been reviewing each and
every case for three years. But, I redoubled my effort
to review each case personally in order to respond to
the concerns of prosecutors and victims' families.
This individual review also naturally resulted in a
collective examination of our entire death penalty
system.
I also had a meeting with a group of people who are
less often heard from, and who are not as popular with
the media. The family members of death row inmates
have a special challenge to face. I spent an afternoon
with those family members at a Catholic Church here in
Chicago. At that meeting, I heard a different kind of
pain expressed. Many of these families live with the
twin pain of knowing not only that, in some cases,
their family member may have been responsible for
inflicting a terrible trauma on another family, but
also the pain of knowing that society has called for
another killing. These parents, siblings and children
are not to blame for the crime committed, yet these
innocent stand to have their loved ones killed by the
state. As Mr. Mandela told me, they are also branded
and scarred for life because of the awful crime
committed by their family member.
Others were even more tormented by the fact that their
loved one was another victim, that they were truly
innocent of the crime for which they were sentenced to
die.
It was at this meeting that I looked into the face of
Claude Lee, the father of Eric Lee, who was convicted
of killing Kankakee police officer Anthony Samfay a
few years ago. It was a traumatic moment, once again,
for my hometown. A brave officer, part of that thin
blue line that protects each of us, was struck down by
wanton violence. If you will kill a police officer,
you have absolutely no respect for the laws of man or
God.
I've know the Lee family for a number of years. There
does not appear to be much question that Eric was
guilty of killing the officer. However, I can say now
after our review, there is also not much question that
Eric is seriously ill, with a history of treatment for
mental illness going back a number of years.
The crime he committed was a terrible one, killing a
police officer. Society demands that the highest
penalty be paid.
But I had to ask myself : could I send another man's
son to death under the deeply flawed system of capital
punishment we have in Illinois? A troubled young man,
with a history of mental illness? Could I rely on the
system of justice we have in Illinois not to make
another horrible mistake? Could I rely on a fair
sentencing?
In the United States the overwhelming majority of
those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted
or mentally unstable. The frequently are raised in an
impoverished and abusive environment.
Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of
capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.
To quote Governor Brown again, he said "society
has both the right and the moral duty to protect
itself against its enemies. This natural and
prehistoric axiom has never successfully been refuted.
If by ordered death, society is really protected and
our homes and institutions guarded, then even the most
extreme of all penalties can be justified."
"Beyond its honor and incredibility, it has
neither protected the innocent nor deterred the
killers. Publicly sanctioned killing has cheapened
human life and dignity without the redeeming grace
which comes from justice metered out swiftly, evenly,
humanely."
At stake throughout the clemency process, was whether
some, all or none of these inmates on death row would
have their sentences commuted from death to life
without the possibility parole.
One of the things discussed with family members was
life without parole was seen as a life filled with
perks and benefits.
Some inmates on death row don't want a sentence of
life without parole. Danny Edwards wrote me and told
me not to do him any favors because he didn't want to
face a prospect of a life in prison without parole.
They will be confined in a cell that is about
5-feet-by-12 feet, usually double-bunked. Our prisons
have no air conditioning, except at our supermax
facility where inmates are kept in their cell 23 hours
a day. In summer months, temperatures in these prisons
exceed one hundred degrees. It is a stark and dreary
existence. They can think about their crimes. Life
without parole has even, at times, been described by
prosecutors as a fate worse than death.
Yesterday, I mentioned a lawsuit in Livingston County
where a judge ruled the state corrections department
cannot force feed two corrections inmates who are on a
hunger strike. The judge ruled that suicide by hunger
strike was not an irrational action by the inmates,
given what their future holds.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it
is unconstitutional and cruel and unusual punishment
to execute the mentally retarded. It is now the law of
the land. How many people have we already executed who
were mentally retarded and are now dead and buried?
Although we now know that they have been killed by the
state unconstitutionally and illegally. Is that fair?
Is that right?
This court decision was last spring. The General
Assembly failed to pass any measure defining what
constitutes mental retardation. We are a rudderless
ship because they failed to act.
This is even after the Illinois Supreme Court also
told lawmakers that it is their job and it must be
done.
I started with this issue concerned about innocence.
But once I studied, once I pondered what had become of
our justice system, I came to care above all about
fairness. Fairness is fundamental to the American
system of justice and our way of life.
The facts I have seen in reviewing each and every one
of these cases raised questions not only about the
innocence of people on death row, but about the
fairness of the death penalty system as a whole.
If the system was making so many errors in determining
whether someone was guilty in the first place, how
fairly and accurately was it determining which guilty
defendants deserved to live and which deserved to die?
What effect was race having? What effect was poverty
having?
And in almost every one of the exonerated 17, we not
only have breakdowns in the system with police,
prosecutors and judges, we have terrible cases of
shabby defense lawyers. There is just no way to sugar
coat it. There are defense attorneys that did not
consult with their clients, did not investigate the
case and were completely unqualified to handle complex
death penalty cases. They often didn't put much effort
into fighting a death sentence. If your life is on the
line, your lawyer ought to be fighting for you. As I
have said before, there is more than enough blame to
go around.
I had more questions.
In Illinois, I have learned, we have 102 decision
makers. Each of them are politically elected, each
beholden to the demands of their community and, in
some cases, to the media or especially vocal victims'
families. In cases that have the attention of the
media and the public, are decisions to seek the death
penalty more likely to occur? What standards are these
prosecutors using?
Some people have assailed my power to commute
sentences, a power that literally hundreds of legal
scholars from across the country have defended. But
prosecutors in Illinois have the ultimate commutation
power, a power that is exercised every day. They
decide who will be subject to the death penalty, who
will get a plea deal or even who may get a complete
pass on prosecution. By what objective standards do
they make these decisions? We do not know, they are
not public. There were more than 1000 murders last
year in Illinois. There is no doubt that all murders
are horrific and cruel. Yet, less than 2 percent of
those murder defendants will receive the death
penalty. That means more than 98% of victims families
do not get, and will not receive whatever satisfaction
can be derived from the execution of the murderer.
Moreover, if you look at the cases, as I have done,
both individually and collectively -- a killing with
the same circumstances might get 40 years in one
county and death in another county. I have also seen
where co-defendants who are equally or even more
culpable get sentenced to a term of years, while
another less culpable defendant ends up on death row.
In my case-by-case review, I found three people that
fell into this category, Mario Flores, Montel Johnson
and William Franklin. Today I have commuted their
sentences to a term of 40 years to bring their
sentences into line with their co-defendants and to
reflect the other extraordinary circumstances of these
cases.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart has said that the
imposition of the death penalty on defendants in this
country is as freakish and arbitrary as who gets hit
by a bolt of lightning.
For years the criminal justice system defended and
upheld the imposition of the death penalty for the 17
exonerated inmates from Illinois Death row. Yet when
the real killers are charged, prosecutors have often
sought sentences of less than death. In the Ford
Heights Four Case, Verneal Jimerson and Dennis
Williams fought the death sentences imposed upon them
for 18 years before they were exonerated. Later, Cook
County prosecutors sought life in prison for two of
the real killers and a sentence of 80 years for a
third.
What made the murder for which the Ford Heights Four
were sentenced to die less heinous and worthy of the
death penalty twenty years later with a new set of
defendants?
We have come very close to having our state Supreme
Court rule our death penalty statute - the one that I
helped enact in 1977 - unconstitutional. Former State
Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon wrote to me that
it was only happenstance that our statute was not
struck down by the state's high court. When he joined
the bench in 1980, three other justices had already
said Illinois' death penalty was unconstitutional. But
they got cold feet when a case came along to revisit
the question. One judge wrote that he wanted to wait
and see if the Supreme Court of the United States
would rule on the constitutionality of the new
Illinois law. Another said precedent required him to
follow the old state Supreme Court ruling with which
he disagreed.
Even a pharmacist knows that doesn't make sense. We
wouldn't have a death penalty today, and we all
wouldn't be struggling with this issue, if those votes
had been different. How arbitrary.
Several years after we enacted our death penalty
statute, Girvies Davis was executed. Justice Simon
writes that he was executed because of this
unconstitutional aspect of the Illinois law -- the
wide latitude that each Illinois State's Attorney has
to determine what cases qualify for the death penalty.
One State's Attorney waived his request for the death
sentence when Davis' first sentencing was sent back to
the trial court for a new sentencing hearing. The
prosecutor was going to seek a life sentence. But in
the interim, a new State's Attorney took office and
changed directions. He once again sought and secured a
death sentence. Davies was executed.
How fair is that?
After the flaws in our system were exposed, the
Supreme Court of Illinois took it upon itself to begin
to reform its' rules and improve the trial of capital
cases. It changed the rule to require that State's
Attorney's give advance notice to defendants that they
plan to seek the death penalty to require notice
before trial instead of after conviction. The Supreme
Court also enacted new discovery rules designed to
prevent trials by ambush and to allow for better
investigation of cases from the beginning.
But shouldn't that mean if you were tried or sentenced
before the rules changed, you ought to get a new trial
or sentencing with the new safeguards of the rules?
This issue has divided our Supreme Court, some saying
yes, a majority saying no. These justices have a
lifetime of experience with the criminal justice
system and it concerns me that these great minds so
strenuously differ on an issue of such importance,
especially where life or death hangs in the balance.
What are we to make of the studies that showed that
more than 50% of Illinois jurors could not understand
the confusing and obscure sentencing instructions that
were being used? What effect did that problem have on
the trustworthiness of death sentences? A review of
the cases shows that often even the lawyers and judges
are confused about the instructions - let alone the
jurors sitting in judgment. Cases still come before
the Supreme Court with arguments about whether the
jury instructions were proper.
I spent a good deal of time reviewing these death row
cases. My staff, many of whom are lawyers, spent busy
days and many sleepless nights answering my questions,
providing me with information, giving me advice. It
became clear to me that whatever decision I made, I
would be criticized. It also became clear to me that
it was impossible to make reliable choices about
whether our capital punishment system had really done
its job.
As I came closer to my decision, I knew that I was
going to have to face the question of whether I
believed so completely in the choice I wanted to make
that I could face the prospect of even commuting the
death sentence of Daniel Edwards, the man who had
killed a close family friend of mine. I discussed it
with my wife, Lura Lynn, who has stood by me all these
years. She was angry and disappointed at my decision
like many of the families of other victims will be.
I was struck by the anger of the families of murder
victims. To a family they talked about closure. They
pleaded with me to allow the state to kill an inmate
in its name to provide the families with closure. But
is that the purpose of capital punishment? Is it to
soothe the families? And is that truly what the
families experience.
I cannot imagine losing a family member to murder. Nor
can I imagine spending every waking day for 20 years
with a single minded focus to execute the killer. The
system of death in Illinois is so unsure that it is
not unusual for cases to take 20 years before they are
resolved. And thank God. If it had moved any faster,
then Anthony Porter, the Ford Heights Four, Ronald
Jones, Madison Hobley and the other innocent men we've
exonerated might be dead and buried.
But it is cruel and unusual punishment for family
members to go through this pain, this legal limbo for
20 years. Perhaps it would be less cruel if we
sentenced the killers to TAMS to life, and used our
resources to better serve victims.
My heart ached when I heard one grandmother who lost
children in an arson fire. She said she could not
afford proper grave markers for her grandchildren who
died. Why can't the state help families provide a
proper burial?
Another crime victim came to our family meetings. He
believes an inmate sent to death row for another crime
also shot and paralyzed him. The inmate he says gets
free health care while the victim is struggling to pay
his substantial medical bills and, as a result, he has
forgone getting proper medical care to alleviate the
physical pain he endures.
What kind of victims services are we providing? Are
all of our resources geared toward providing this
notion of closure by execution instead of tending to
the physical and social service needs of victim
families? And what kind of values are we instilling in
these wounded families and in the young people? As
Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only leaves the whole
world blind.
President Lincoln often talked of binding up wounds as
he sought to preserve the Union. "We are not
enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection."
I have had to consider not only the horrible nature of
the crimes that put men on death row in the first
place, the terrible suffering of the surviving family
members of the victims, the despair of the family
members of the inmates, but I have also had to watch
in frustration as members of the Illinois General
Assembly failed to pass even one substantive death
penalty reform. Not one. They couldn't even agree on
ONE. How much more evidence is needed before the
General Assembly will take its responsibility in this
area seriously?
The fact is that the failure of the General Assembly
to act is merely a symptom of the larger problem. Many
people express the desire to have capital punishment.
Few, however, seem prepared to address the tough
questions that arise when the system fails. It is
easier and more comfortable for politicians to be
tough on crime and support the death penalty. It wins
votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a
problem, most run for cover. Prosecutors across our
state continue to deny that our death penalty system
is broken, or they say if there is a problem, it is
really a small one and we can fix it somehow. It is
difficult to see how the system can be fixed when not
a single one of the reforms proposed by my Capital
Punishment Commission has been adopted. Even the
reforms the prosecutors agree with haven't been
adopted.
So when will the system be fixed? How much more risk
can we afford? Will we actually have to execute an
innocent person before the tragedy that is our capital
punishment system in Illinois is really understood?
This summer, a United States District court judge held
the federal death penalty was unconstitutional and
noted that with the number of recent exonerations
based on DNA and new scientific technology we
undoubtedly executed innocent people before this
technology emerged.
As I prepare to leave office, I had to ask myself
whether I could really live with the prospect of
knowing that I had the opportunity to act, but that I
failed to do so because I might be criticized. Could I
take the chance that our capital punishment system
might be reformed, that wrongful convictions might not
occur, that enterprising journalism students might
free more men from death row? A system that's so
fragile that it depends on young journalism students
is seriously flawed.
"There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way
to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its
ending."
That's what Abraham Lincoln said about the bloody war
between the states. It was a war fought to end the
sorriest chapter in American history--the institution
of slavery. While we are not in a civil war now, we
are facing what is shaping up to be one of the great
civil rights struggles of our time. Stephen Bright of
the Southern Center for Human Rights has taken the
position that the death penalty is being sought with
increasing frequency in some states against the poor
and minorities.
Our own study showed that juries were more likely to
sentence to death if the victim were white than if the
victim were black--three-and-a-half times more likely
to be exact. We are not alone. Just this month
Maryland released a study of their death penalty
system and racial disparities exist there too.
This week, Mamie Till died. Her son Emmett was lynched
in Mississippi in the 1950s. She was a strong advocate
for civil rights and reconciliation. In fact just
three weeks ago, she was the keynote speaker at the
Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation Event in
Chicago. This group, many of whom I've met, opposes
the death penalty even though their family members
have been lost to senseless killing. Mamie's strength
and grace not only ignited the civil rights
movement--including inspiring Rosa Parks to refuse to
go to the back of the bus--but inspired murder
victims' families until her dying day.
Is our system fair to all? Is justice blind? These are
important human rights issues.
Another issue that came up in my individual,
case-by-case review was the issue of international
law. The Vienna Convention protects U.S. citizens
abroad and foreign nationals in the United States. It
provides that if you arrested, you should be afforded
the opportunity to contact your consulate. There are
five men on death row who were denied that
internationally recognized human right. Mexico's
President Vicente Fox contacted me to express his deep
concern for the Vienna Convention violations. If we do
not uphold international law here, we cannot expect
our citizens to be protected outside the United
States.
My Commission recommended the Supreme Court conduct a
proportionality review of our system in Illinois.
While our appellate courts perform a case by case
review of the appellate record, they have not done
such a big picture study. Instead, we tinker with a
case-by-case review as each appeal lands on their
docket.
In 1994, near the end of his distinguished career on
the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Harry
Blackmun wrote an influential dissent in the body of
law on capital punishment. 20 years earlier he was
part of the court that issued the landmark Furman
decision. The Court decided that the death penalty
statutes in use throughout the country were fraught
with severe flaws that rendered them unconstitutional.
Quite frankly, they were the same problems we see here
in Illinois. To many, it looked liked the Furman
decision meant the end of the death penalty in the
United States.
This was not the case. Many states responded to Furman
by developing and enacting new and improved death
penalty statutes. In 1976, four years after it had
decided Furman, Justice Blackmun joined the majority
of the United States Supreme Court in deciding to give
the States a chance with these new and improved death
penalty statutes. There was great optimism in the air.
This was the climate in 1977, when the Illinois
legislature was faced with the momentous decision of
whether to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois. I
was a member of the General Assembly at that time and
when I pushed the green button in favor of reinstating
the death penalty in this great State, I did so with
the belief that whatever problems had plagued the
capital punishment system in the past were now being
cured. I am sure that most of my colleagues who voted
with me that day shared that view.
But 20 years later, after affirming hundreds of death
penalty decisions, Justice Blackmun came to the
realization, in the twilight of his distinguished
career that the death penalty remains fraught with
arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice and
mistake." He expressed frustration with a 20-year
struggle to develop procedural and substantive
safeguards. In a now famous dissent he wrote in 1994,
" From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker
with the machinery of death."
One of the few disappointments of my legislative and
executive career is that the General Assembly failed
to work with me to reform our deeply flawed system.
I don't know why legislators could not heed the rising
voices of reform. I don't know how many more systemic
flaws we needed to uncover before they would be
spurred to action.
Three times I proposed reforming the system with a
package that would restrict the use of jailhouse
snitches, create a statewide panel to determine death
eligible cases, and reduce the number of crimes
eligible for death. These reforms would not have
created a perfect system, but they would have
dramatically reduced the chance for error in the
administration of the ultimate penalty.
The Governor has the constitutional role in our state
of acting in the interest of justice and fairness. Our
state constitution provides broad power to the
Governor to issue reprieves, pardons and commutations.
Our Supreme Court has reminded inmates petitioning
them that the last resort for relief is the governor.
At times the executive clemency power has perhaps been
a crutch for courts to avoid making the kind of major
change that I believe our system needs.
Our systemic case-by-case review has found more cases
of innocent men wrongfully sentenced to death row.
Because our three year study has found only more
questions about the fairness of the sentencing;
because of the spectacular failure to reform the
system; because we have seen justice delayed for
countless death row inmates with potentially
meritorious claims; because the Illinois death penalty
system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore
immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery
of death.
I cannot say it more eloquently than Justice Blackmun.
The legislature couldn't reform it.
Lawmakers won't repeal it.
But I will not stand for it.
I must act.
Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error,
error in determining guilt, and error in determining
who among the guilty deserves to die. Because of all
of these reasons today I am commuting the sentences of
all death row inmates.
This is a blanket commutation. I realize it will draw
ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this
decision. They will say I am usurping the decisions of
judges and juries and state legislators. But as I have
said, the people of our state have vested in me to act
in the interest of justice. Even if the exercise of my
power becomes my burden I will bear it. Our
constitution compels it. I sought this office, and
even in my final days of holding it I cannot shrink
from the obligations to justice and fairness that it
demands.
There have been many nights where my staff and I have
been deprived of sleep in order to conduct our
exhaustive review of the system. But I can tell you
this: I will sleep well knowing I made the right
decision.
As I said when I declared the moratorium, it is time
for a rational discussion on the death penalty. While
our experience in Illinois has indeed sparked a
debate, we have fallen short of a rational discussion.
Yet if I did not take this action, I feared that there
would be no comprehensive and thorough inquiry into
the guilt of the individuals on death row or of the
fairness of the sentences applied.
To say it plainly one more time- the Illinois capital
punishment system is broken. It has taken innocent men
to a hair's breadth escape from their unjust
execution. Legislatures past have refused to fix it.
Our new legislature and our new Governor must act to
rid our state of the shame of threatening the innocent
with execution and the guilty with unfairness.
In the days ahead, I will pray that we can open our
hearts and provide something for victims' families
other than the hope of revenge. Lincoln once said:
" I have always found that mercy bears richer
fruits than strict justice." I can only hope that
will be so. God bless you. And God bless the people of
Illinois."
To download this speech in PDF format,
please click here.
To download a German Language version in PDF format,
please click here.
To download a French Language version in PDF format,
please click here.
To download an Italian Language version in PDF format,
please click here.
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